The Paris Diary & The New York Diary 1951-1961

by Ned Rorem

When The Paris Diary exploded on the scene in 1966 there had never been a book in English quite like it: Its intimate combination of personal, literary, and social insights was unprecedented. Rorem's self-portrait of the artist as a young man, written between 1951 and 1955, was also a mirror of the times, depicting the now vanished milieu of Cocteau, Eluard, Gide, Landowska, Boulez, the Vicomtesse de Noailles, and others whose paths crossed with Rorem's in such settings as Paris, Morocco, and Italy. The New York Diary, published the following year, pictured the period between 1956 and 1960, when Rorem had returned to America. The diaries marked the beginnings of Gay Liberation, not because Rorem made a special issue of his sexuality, but because he did not; rather, he wrote of his affairs frankly and unashamedly. A casualness informs each sensual entry, and the overall tone is at once bratty and brilliant, insecure and vain, loving and cultured, but, above all, honest and entertaining.

Genres: Music, France, Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Diary, New York

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Ned Rorem (born October 23, 1923) is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.

Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana and received his early education in Chicago at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the American Conservatory of Music and then Northwestern University. Later, Rorem moved on to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and finally the Juilliard School in New York City.

In 1966 he published The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem, which, with his later diaries, has brought him some notoriety, as he is honest about his and others' sexuality, describing his relationships with Leonard Bernstein, Noël Coward, Samuel Barber, and Virgil Thomson, and outing several others[vague] (Aldrich and Wotherspoon, eds., 2001). Rorem has written extensively about music as well. These essays are collected in anthologies such as Setting the Tone, Music From the Inside Out, and Music and People. His prose is much admired, not least for its barbed observations about such prominent musicians as Pierre Boulez. Rorem has composed in a chromatic tonal idiom throughout his career, and he is not hesitant to attack the orthodoxies of the avant-garde.

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why was I reading this? Because one night after I'd ran to my BFF Mindee's apartment in Chinatown, I had nothing to read on the train ride home and she lent it to me. I wouldn't know Ned Rorem's music if it grabbed me in an alley and tried to give me a handjob, and I actually don't think I've ever read anyone else's diary before (except Anne Frank's, of course, but I was like nine). So this really isn't the sort of thing I'd usually pick up, but BFF Mindee loves it for some reason, and actually I did enjoy it. It fell into my lap on the heels of Genet and while I was reading Proust, so the Gay Paris continuity felt right, and it was fun to read Rorem's reaction to Our Lady of the Flowers when it came out, and to hear him mention reading Proust. I liked this book a lot.

Well, for awhile, in small doses. You probably can't just sit down and plow through it, because after too much at once you'll be overwhelmed by a an unsatisfiable desire to slap Ned Rorem in the face. It's sort of a leave-on-the-back-of-your-toilet, throw-in-the-beach-bag-en-route-to-Fire-Island, drag-to-the-post-office, etc. kind of book.... But there is some truly great stuff in here, don't get me wrong. I'd quote from it, but I don't have it anymore; the Baudelaire quotation on my profile's from this book, but he does get off some great lines of his own.... What I really felt like was that Rorem was one of my Booksters whom I initially found so enchantingly brilliant and charming I just couldn't believe it, only after reading too many of his reviews, I got a bit burnt out on his style, and it stopped being fun. I'd need to take some time off and then return, refreshed from our period of separation, and then I'd be able to appreciate his writing again.

One thing I found nice about reading this diary is realizing that even if I were a talented, famous, wildly popular, gorgeous, gay male composer being constantly fêted in Paris in the 1950s, a lot of my diary entries would sound pretty similar to how they do now, only with a lot more name-dropping and more romantic settings. Rorem's one of those horrific alcoholics who makes girls like me feel better, and his anxiety as he ages -- he's around thirty during these entries -- made me feel better too, in the way that watching a Blondie video at the gym the other day made me feel better about never looking like Debbie Harry (i.e., if you're never a star, the fall isn't so far.)

I did like and actually related to Rorem in a lot of ways, but as the book went on his bratty, self-conscious, self-centered, self-aware style did grow a bit less endearing. I actually had one of those really boring, mundane-moment-of-real-life kinds of dreams Saturday night in which I told Mindee that I'd loved reading Rorem at the beginning, but that after awhile some of the honesty seemed to have worn away and every entry seemed to be a straining effort at aphorism. When I woke up, that's kind of when I knew that it wasn't going to happen for us, and that I wouldn't reach the New York section on this try. Again, I haven't really read any other published diaries, and this one made me wonder about what that's all about, publishing diaries. I myself keep a diary, and even if I wind up writing the best symphony ever and hobnobbing around with Jenny Holzer or J. M. Coetzee or Kim Kardushin or whoever's our time's answer to the people Rorem knows, I guarantee you that it won't be published, because it's one of the dullest documents ever written. No one but me would ever make it through more than a few pages of my diary without throwing up, falling asleep, or hunting me down to push me out a window. The stuff I write on here is actually (don't snort derisively) a lot more interesting than my diary, because that's just personal therapy and here I'm writing with at least a vague idea of audience in mind. This makes me wonder what Rorem was doing, and what professional diarists are thinking. Because I really have no idea! What's funny is that the parts that were more interesting to me were the seemingly duller, more private-diarylike entries, such as the repetitiveness of his drinking problem, and I got bored when I felt like he was trying to create some historically-relevant, clever book for other people to read. Um, that completely contradicts what I just said about how my diary is boring and the stuff I write knowing other people will read it is better..... Maybe my diary's actually more interesting than I realize (note to family: don't do it), and my book reports are just as annoying as I sometimes suspect.

Anyway.... Who would like this? Morrissey I think definitely would, and if I ran into him on the street in LA I'd probably risk pissing him off to ask if he'd read it. Rorem sort of seems like the Morrissey of his time, and I wonder if they know each other's work or have met. I did like this, and I probably would've kept picking away at it -- I'd read over half -- only BFF Mindee moved to Richmond, Virginia, so I gave it back to her last night when we met for goodbye cocktails. Mindee moved to New York almost seven years ago, two months before I did, and she's been an enormous part of my life, and my New York City experience, the whole time that I've lived here. I sort of can't believe she's gone now, and so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go home and process this in my diary.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not deathless literature, but fun, gossipy, racy - and occasionally profound. Rorem's diary traces his life in Paris and Hyères in the early 50s, when he was a much feted and celebrated young composer, part angelically beautiful wunderkind, part drunken boor, part priapic enfant terrible. A dynamo of charming vanity. The first entry:

A stranger asks 'Are you Ned Rorem?' I answer 'No,' adding that however I've heard of him and would like to meet him.

His music is enchanting. I've been listening to a recording of his three symphonies, all from the 50s, and they're what I've been searching for for a long time. The melodies are graceful, slightly pastoral, the orchestration very French, luminous and lean, full of clean colors - flutes, clarinets and harps. Sweetly sad, gallantly melancholy. I wonder what Balanchine might have done with the Tranquillo of Symphony No. 2. Recommended if you like Poulenc, Thomson, or Copland.

[Asclepiade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Da ciò che mi par di capire, questa raccolta di annotazioni diaristiche pubblicata (nella veste attuale) nel 1967 non riscuote grande plauso fra i compatrioti del musicista americano Ned Rorem (nato nel 1923 e tuttora vivente), probabilmente per ragioni che tutto sommato esulano dalle sue qualità letterarie: la sensazione che Rorem sia snob e il modo in cui parla della propria omosessualità. Lo snobismo del compositore americano starebbe nel fatto che durante il soggiorno a Parigi era ospite di Marie-Laure de Noailles e frequentava molta gente celebre, da Nancy Mitford a Francis Poulenc, da Cocteau a Boris Kochno, da Ciccolini a Charles Henri Ford, da Menotti a Bernstein: ma mica era colpa sua se era un bel ragazzo, scriveva musica che piaceva ed evidentemente risultava di buona compagnia, nonostante ciò che spesso dice di sé stesso, visto che lo invitavano un po’ dappertutto; i censori che lo giudicano tanto acerbamente per il suo amore verso la vita in società senza dubbio bramerebbero, sotto sotto, essere al suo posto: solo che con ogni probabilità nessuno li vorrebbe a cena o a passarci assieme le vacanze, musoni e noiosi come sono. Quanto alle storie sentimentali di Rorem, e alle sue avventure occasionali, data l’epoca piuttosto vereconda e omofoba in cui scriveva, mi sembra che ne parli assai liberamente, benché non con entusiasmo: ebbe relazioni altalenanti, e in particolare una con un italiano di Dorno, che indica con le iniziali P.Q., e una con un francese di nome Claude, che si concluse in modo ben più sofferto dell’altra, terminatasi probabilmente per mutuo esaurimento del desiderio. Forse Rorem era più simpatico quale compagno di bevute od ospite a cena, che come innamorato. Sebbene affermi di avere scritto poco di musica in queste pagine, ogni tanto ne discorre, in ispecie per menzionare i suoi colleghi che non gli vanno a genio: non gli garbavano i valzer di Strauss e la musica di Berlioz, ma viepiù detestava la dodecafonia, cosa che, scritta negli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta, sonava particolarmente blasfema; inutile dire che a Parigi fra lui e Pierre Boulez c’era un muro invalicabile: ma Pierre Boulez da giovane doveva essere così odioso che a starne lontani non c’era che da guadagnare in buon umore. L’accusa rivolta più volte in queste pagine contro la dodecafonia è quella ormai diffusamente fatta propria dall’odierna storiografia musicale, ossia l’aver anteposto la scientia al piacere dell’ascolto; e in effetti, anche se molte composizioni dei primi dodecafonisti, come Schönberg o Berg, intendevano ancora coniugare l’approfondimento della tecnica compositiva testé ideata e una qualità stilistica che fosse magari difficile ed impegnativa per l’ascoltatore, ma non decisamente ostile alle sue aspettative, la deriva cupa del dopoguerra finì per guardare con sospetto, e spesso anche con avversione, il piacere in sé dell’ascolto: poi magari si qualificavano come rozzi filistei quei poveri spettatori paganti che dicevano “Tiè, alla prossima non mi vedi più!”, rifiutavano di fare i martiri più d’una volta, e a Boulez preferivano Puccini o Mascagni. A proposito, con un granello di perfidia Rorem nota che sovente, appena sotto la patina rigorosa delle nuove musiche, serpeggiava invincibile il vecchio linguaggio nazionale: perfino echi di melodramma italiano in Luigi Nono. Il Nostro era un lettore vorace, e si vede da come scrive: purtroppo non gl’interessava tenere partitamente traccia delle sue letture in questi quaderni, o almeno nella parte scelta per la pubblicazione; confessava invece una certa sua cecità verso le arti figurative: il che si nota molto quando riferisce dei viaggi e delle escursioni in Italia; invece aveva occhio per i colori della natura. Parlo al passato anche se Rorem è ancora vivo, perché nel frattempo potrebbe essere cambiato: dei suoi diarî ho letto soltanto questo. Particolare curioso, il tema più ricorrente nel libro è quello più sordido, cioè l’amore del Nostro per il bere, che condivideva peraltro, ad esempio, con un suo grande collega come Brahms: ne parla molto, in ispecie nella parte americana del diario, allorché il problema divenne particolarmente drammatico; qualche volta dà resoconto anche di sogni sadici od orribili, forse cagionati o favoriti dall’indulgere soverchio alle bevande alcoliche. Proprio per tale ragione la seconda metà del libro, ambientata in particolare fra Nuova York, Buffalo e Saratoga Springs, appare più claustrofobica e lugubre della prima, dove Rorem vive prevalentemente in Francia, in cui, all’opposto, molte pagine brillano per ironia e ariosità: l’autore negli Stati Uniti si sentiva per certi versi a casa, ma per altri estraneo, rifiutato e incompreso. Alla fine lo vediamo sulla via del ritorno a Parigi: ma, al contrario di altri suoi colleghi espatriati, non vi sarebbe rimasto per sempre. La scrittura è curata, molto ricca, punteggiata di aneddoti a volte spiritosi e brillanti. Peccato, anzi, che Rorem a volte sia fin troppo stringato e reticente: sarebbe carino sapere ad esempio che cosa gli raccontasse Nancy Mitford mentre passeggiavano per la campagna del Midi. Quanto ai personaggi celati al lettore perché ancor vivi al tempo della prima edizione, credo che la Violet T. di cui è menzione a p.242 sia la Trefusis, opportunamente nascosta con un’iniziale visto che Sir John Pope-Hennessy l’aveva appena definita “that stupid pretentious lady”; ma chi sarà il Douglas C. che poco prima, sempre a Firenze, Sir Harold Acton aveva chiamato “loathsome hypocritical snake”? Qualcuno mi può aiutare? A proposito, apprendiamo che “Acton’s Jamesian mother” serviva cocktail al posto del tè, e aveva a Villa La Pietra “the most beautiful gardens in the world (with a gardener still more beautiful than his roses)”. J’adore.

[Erik Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Then: What a charming and ludicrously gifted little shit. Now: 90 years old and still beautiful. I hate him.

[Gregg Clare · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am being kind by giving this two stars but I do feel that if you want to read a collection of pretentious drivel this book will surely foot the bill. I read this book because I heard it was quite racy for it's time and while not looking for graphic details I was hoping for more than the thin references he gives to his love life.

This is not a personal diary. It is written as if he knew that it would be read by others so names are hidden and instances merely hinted at. One chapter is a mind numbing letter to a lover who broke his heart and if his writing is any indication of how he actually talks I know why his lover left.

Ned Rorem drones on about getting older, not being beautiful anymore, his excessive drinking and not drinking and then drinking again.

A few insights that I gave an extra star for but frankly I have never been happier to finish a book.

[Alex Diaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most "great artists", when they set about writing recollections of their lives and thoughts, tend to expound prolifically on either their views on their work, or on the minutae of their daily lives. What is fascinating about Rorem's approach is that the entirety of the book reads more as a philosphical reader than an artist's recollections. What's more, Rorem rarely if ever spares the reader a single thought, to the extent that his writings are simulatneously hard-hitting and, often times, extremely vulgar. This made the book difficult to read at times, but overall between Rorem's musings on aesthetics and his crushing descriptions of his struggles with alcoholism, I felt myself drawn to his experiences with empathy for him as a human being first, and as an artist second, something which rarely happens with the other big names in music. It would seem that one of the trade-offs for a moderate level of fame is the ability to see oneself without artifice, and articulate that earthy, uncomfortable, and ultimately universal struggle to live, and be okay with living.

Overall Rating: Devastating and neccesary, for every artist and for any human.

[Sam Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps U-High's greatest composer, Rorem had an amazing career as a prettyboy in postwar Paris, petted by Cocteau and making his way - then returning to the US tompose. His bitchy observations on everyone including himself, his constand French/German lists, his impatience, his liberal pieties, his deeprooted Americanism despite his conventionalty, his loves, his description of music politics and how much time it takes to compsose, which way to face the tp on the tp roller. You may not read one but if you do there are volumes and volumnes, including his memoirs of growing up in Hyde Park with semi-nudist parents, the discovery of his homosexuality and his beauty simultaneously, his flirtation with Billie Holliday - a great life gripps us for a while.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could give this a 3.5. Part of me was turned off by Rorem's obsessive narcissism, but I was repeatedly drawn in by his vivid descriptions and turns of phrase. I found myself copying short passages and walking around with Rorem's language in my head:

"Cinema in general pleases me so much more than theater. Like panic, it is the art of my time" (258).

"This woman still in the company of that woman whose power was such that she even influenced her predecessors" [on Alice Toklas] (256).

"I show my foliage too much" (272).

"Sometimes I feel that the most faithful union is that sealed by a glance from a passing train to a boy in a pear tree" (275).

[JerryDeanHalleck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its hard to think of someone I have less in common with than Ned Rorem. I'm not Gay, don't compose music, and have never lived in Paris, Rome, NYC, or Morroco. Yet, I found this often depressed, sometimes suicidal, usually hung-over author's musing on life rather interesting. He certainly knew a lot of famous people of this time. Genet, Cocteau, Marelen Deitrich, Bowles, etc. And he writes of an interesting time - 1950s - and a lost world where Art, classical music, painting, and fiction stil mattered. People wanted to make art then, not march in the Gay Pride parade.

However, while i give it three stars, I wouldn't recommend it for the general reader.

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd never heard of Ned Rorem until I picked up this book in a thrift store. He knew everyone who was anyone in Paris in the 50's--Cocteau, Gide, Virgil Thompson, Julien Greene, etc. and his gossipy and candid comments about them are fascinating. Even better though are his own ruminations on his life, art, and obsessions. The book is filled with quotable quips and serious observations and he turns out to be that rare talent--a musician who can write!

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Paris Diary only]. Post-war Paris refracted through the prism of a young, talented, handsome, impossibly self-absorbed composer. The name-dropping is outrageous (and hilarious, if you can bear Rorem's narcissism - he must have been impossible in person). Also an interesting document about gay life in 1950s France.

[Nicholas Good · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting but not memorable. I quit after awhile. Mostly just gossip and occasional racy anecdote with a mostly music/ literary crowd. What was scandalous when it was published is now often just quaint.

[Mic Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this on a cruise - it was so perfect because Ned Rorem was a charming, intelligent man and his writing is sexy, funny and poetic. I haven't listened to any of his music, but I feel like I understand his rhythm.

[Richard Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

NR is as good a writer as he is a composer.

[James Garman · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a couple or three fun spots in this book..which is ini fact a diary. That I say there were a couple or three is pretty much my response to the book and explains why instead of reading the entire thing, which includes two diaries, I only read about 80 percent of the Paris section which was the "assignment" for the book group.

Most of what I read was a lot of name dropping, but nobody that I have any real knowledge or interest in. Much of it was in an area that I have have to many might be a shocking lack of interest in...music and composers. My music interests are pretty limited, basically country, top 40 and DixieLand Jazz and trust me, this book was not about those people.

I did find interest in the fact that Ned was gay and some of his takes on love and romance. His willingness to share some of the details shocked me till I reminded myself this was a dairy and not necessary written for the reader. Who knows if he even meant for it to be published.

Except for the issues above, the only time that I perked my ears was when he mentioned meeting Ruth Gordon. Now if he had reported spend time talking to her and focusing attention on that dear lady, it might have stirred my interest but instead that was just a one time mention and then he went back to names that I have no idea who they are or why I should be interested.

Admittedly I PREFER novels but can read non-fiction if it feels like it impacts me, this did not fit either criteria. However, those reading this review who DO have an interest in what I will call semi-classical show time music or can identify with travels in Europe (where I have never been nor really expect to ever go) would have reasons to enjoy this book.

That is why I give it two stars, because I can see someone thinking "oh yea, I know that corner...." and enjoying the book because of that.

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this book was a mistake, but somehow I finished it. I am lately interested in the arts in Europe in the first half of the 20th Century, but this book in no way expanded my knowledge.

I came to dislike Rorem as the book wore on. Towards the end, he writes: "My nature will remain obstinately sad," which accurately describes the sense of him I am left with, and who wants to read about someone like that? Rorem is brooding, underconfident, narcissistic, joyless and humor less. He is also promiscuous and alcoholic.

It was tiresome to read about all his small maladies. He is sick often, suffers from hemorrhoids (mentioned at least three times), has prostate trouble, and sees a dentist several times (and loses a crown). He is preoccupied with death, which is ironic since he died very recently and seems to have made it to 98 or 99.

As one would expect, the book is no more appealing than the author. It teems with names of both famous and now unknown people, restaurants and hotels. None of the hundreds of people he mentions ever comes to life in the narrative. And having just finished reading this, nothing of consequence seems to have occurred in its pages. The reader is left with no anecdotes, and this is disappointing after wading through all those pages devoid of humor. Finally, there is a great deal of untranslated French in the text, and even with my years of studying the language, about half of it was beyond me. For whom was this stuff written, I wonder.

I gather Rorem has published his journals from other periods as well. As you might expect from the comments above, I will not be reading them.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read four other books by Rorem, I believe this one seems the most disruptive, disturbing, and self-oriented (and admittedly what journal isn’t related to the self). But during the decade he is writing, Rorem is roughly between twenty-seven and thirty-seven. He’s experienced professional success, but not enough. He’s really just getting started on his long career, which will deliver him, short eleven months and change, to his 100th birthday. If one were reading these diaries contemporaneously, however, one might believe he wouldn’t make it to forty. Rorem drinks heavily—blackout and hangover heavily—and he halts alcohol consumption of his own accord often, then begins again. He even mentions (seemingly) with serious intent the idea of suicide. Thankfully, he does not take such action, instead making the most of his life—delivering portfolios plump with fine scores. Read this book, knowing that in spite of his angst, he does live long enough to become one of the most revered American composers of the twentieth century.

[Laurel Zito · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book as I thought it would be interesting. I read the author had died and that is how I discovered the book, but when I flipped through the pages, I like reading diaries, it just sounded like a person ranting on the same subjects and it was not really a diary. Which is why I can't rate it any higher then 2 stars. Its more like reading someone's blog online then a diary.

[Heidi Wills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diary with tones of DFW's Infinite Jest

[Paul Baker]

Endlessly entertaining writing about the glam world of the cosmopolitan creative elite.